


Lessons in Resilience

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Disappointment, Fencing, Friendship, Gen, Resilience, Strength, Swordfighting, Weakness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 17:56:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20231992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Alanna's disappointment in her sword skills provides opportunities for her to learn lessons in resilience.





	Lessons in Resilience

Lessons in Resilience

Incinerating Gaze

In a huff, Alanna dropped into a chair in one of the palace libraries reserved for studying pages and squires with more drama than the motion strictly required. She scowled down at the courtly love poem she was supposed to be reading for tomorrow’s lesson, wishing that it contained information on how to hold and swing her sword so that Captain Sklaw wouldn’t sneer at her in a way more cutting than any sharpened blade. 

“Glare any harder and you’ll burn that poem to cinders,” Gary remarked, emerging from a row of shelves with a pile of books precariously perched between his hands. Alanna didn’t know whether the tower represented research he had been assigned by his knightmaster or books he had removed from the shelves for his own entertainment, though she suspected the latter since Gary was in the habit of reading mountains of books for enjoyment. 

“I will not.” Alanna glowered at Gary as he dumped the stack of books onto the table and slipped into the chair across from her. 

“Don’t incinerate me with those blazing eyes of yours.” Gary lifted his palms in surrender. “Tell me what’s wrong before you set the library on fire.” 

“Sklaw.” Alanna bit her lip, her anger with the gruff captain of the guard ebbing into disappointment with herself for sabotaging her own dreams of becoming a great fencer by being born too short, clumsy, and slow. “He says I have more chance of impaling myself with my sword than any enemy.” 

“He says that to everyone.” Gary’s tone was dry as parchment but somehow not unsympathetic. “Except Alex, of course, whom he doesn’t talk to at all because he doesn’t have anything insulting to say to him.” 

“He means it when he says it to me.” Alanna felt her disappointment flare into envy for Alex, who was never told he was too short, clumsy, or slow to be a mighty swordsman. “He means it when he tells me I’m too short, clumsy, and slow to ever be a strong fencer, even though he never says that to Alex, and Alex is almost as small as I am.” 

“Of course he doesn’t say that to Alex because Alex is the best swordsman among the pages and squires,” Gary pointed out, tart as Alanna’s disappointment. “If you can unseat Alex as the best swordsman among the pages and squires, he won’t say you’re too short, clumsy, and slow to be a decent swordsman either.” 

“Alex is a natural at swordfighting, isn’t he?” Alanna could feel the petulant twist to her own scowl, the edge that said more clearly than words that she didn’t believe it fair Alex should be born a natural swordfighter when she wasn’t. 

“Hard to know.” Gary shrugged. “It’s always hard to tell with the barbarian hillmen, isn’t it? They’re born with swords in their hands and dancing with blades that could chop off their heads before they turn five.” 

“I wish I ‘d been raised on such dances.” Alanna sighed, resting her chin in the heel of her hand. “Do you think Alex could be persuaded to share some tips with me?” 

“No.” Gary’s head shake was slightly woebegone. The reason for this mournful quality became apparent as he continued, “Our tight-lipped friend won’t even offer me tips in exchange for the best court gossip.” 

“Why should he trade for what he can get for free?” Alanna smirked, referring to Gary’s tendency to share court gossip with anyone who would listen. 

“I’m so generous with my knowledge only to be repaid with nothing by stingy secretiveness from my closest companions.” Gary’s gaze shifted abruptly from sorrowful to keen. “Alex isn’t my only friend who’s stingy with his secrets, is he, Alan?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gary.” Alanna’s haughtiness forced its way out of a throat that felt suddenly choked because Gary couldn’t know what he was talking about–he couldn’t know her secret because if anyone at the palace learned it, her entire world could collapse around her ears. 

“I think you do.” Gary leaned back in his chair, flipping open a book and beginning to lose himself in its hundreds of pages. “You just don’t want to tell me, but I can be patient. I have plenty of books to read while I wait for you to become less stingy with your secrets.” 

Short Matters

Alanna came upon Alex practicing sword thrusts in the evening shadows of an otherwise abandoned courtyard. Leaning against the wall, she watched his form as he slid smooth as fresh butter between one maneuver and the next, his speed making it impossible to discern where one motion ended and the next began. Every movement flowed into the next reminding Alanna of a river with hidden depths that could kill those who weren’t careful where they planted their feet. 

She knew he must have seen her drinking in his every motion, but he didn’t snap at her to leave, which she took as him inviting her to share his secret training techniques. Pushing her luck even further, she asked over the slashing of his blade, “Does being short really matter so much in swordfighting?” 

“Of course it matters.” Alex’s face was sharp and scornful. That’s how he was, Alanna thought: sharp and quick with his wit as well as his sword. “Everything matters in swordfighting. Everything can be exploited as a weakness by your opponent or drawn on as a strength by yourself.”

“How do you make being short a strength?” Alanna frowned, her forehead furrowing. 

“I’m short and slender so I can use my agility to tire my opponents.” Alex’s sword never stopped swirling as his calculating eyes swept over her body, no doubt making an index of how every feature represented a strength and weakness to be exploited. “You’re short and stocky so you should be difficult for your opponents to knock over and should have the strength advantage over them pound for pound.” 

“If I’m so strong, why can’t I hold or swing a sword properly?” Alanna’s frown deepened, disbelieving him and herself–disappointed that his advice was so unhelpful to her dismal situation. 

“Because you doubt yourself.” Alex turned his back on her, dismissing her as if she were fool unworthy of his time or guidance. “There’s no room for doubting yourself in swordfighting. There’s only room for certainty because to hesitate in a fight is to die.” 

Those words–that to hesitate was to die–lingered in Alanna’s head, somehow making her doubt herself even more and causing her to become even slower with her sword, something she hadn’t thought was possible until after her conversation with Alex. 

Not a Natural

Alanna wasn’t a natural with the sword, but she trained with enough determination and diligence that she finally received the honor of being the only student apart from Alex who received private fencing lessons from Duke Gareth himself. That recognition should have eased the unrelenting pressure Alanna felt to improve her sword skills, but instead it only increased it. She felt a constant competition not only with herself to every day exceed how she had done on the previous one but with Alex to surpass him as the best swordfighter Duke Gareth ever trained. Beneath that perpetually burning ambition was the opposite, never abating fear that she would never be good enough to earn the approval of her stern training master–that she would disappoint him, leading him to label her as a waste of the King Champion’s precious time and instruction. 

“Your footwork killed you again, Alan.” Duke Gareth’s steel blade glinted in the dawn light as it landed against Alanna’s throat. “You disappoint me.” 

“It won’t happen again, Your Grace.” It was a struggle to speak with Duke Gareth’s sword still coldly kissing her neck as a reminder of the disappointment–his in her and hers in her own inadequacy–that made her feel as if dismemberment would be a mercy. 

“I should hope so. Twice today is enough.” Duke Gareth’s eyes could be cutting as his words, and Alanna was certain he had to be aware of the budding rivalry between her and Alex when he went on, “Alex is never so clod-footed.” 

“Alex is a natural swordsman like you, Your Grace!” Alanna resisted the temptation to hurl her sword across the courtyard by reminding herself that such disrespect would earn her many hours spent polishing weaponry in the palace armory. “I’m not.” 

“Do you think it was easy for me to become King’s Champion?” Duke Gareth lifted a thin eyebrow. 

“No, Your Grace.” Alanna’s cheeks were flushed–not from exertion, but shame at her own loss of temper before a man who never lost his composure. 

“You’re right. It took many years of unstinting effort and countless disappointments.” Duke Gareth’s tone had a wry edge. “Disappointments are our best teachers. They provide lessons in resilience and make us learn things we don’t want to know but need to know.” 

“Yes, Your Grace,” Alanna agreed, although she was aware that she would never be able to stop seeing her disappointments as reflections of her own shame, mirrors that shone her dashed dreams back in her face to blind her.


End file.
